


Moving Away

by berrries



Category: Monsters Inc. (Movies)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, Bittersweet, College, Post-Canon, Self-Indulgent, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:20:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25949512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berrries/pseuds/berrries
Summary: Basically just what if Mike and Sully repair Boo's door too late and when they return, she's all grown up.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Moving Away

**Author's Note:**

> I don't usually write this sort of thing, but this alternate ending was too much to resist.

“Ready?” Mike asked softly. Sully pressed his lips into a thin line. It had been a while, after all. He didn’t know what to expect. Boo might not recognize him. Or maybe she doesn’t think they’re real anymore. She may not even be scared of monsters anymore, which would be great. He pushed open the door and took a deep breath before entering. 

The walls weren’t striped anymore but rather a pastel pink. The bed was the same, but with turquoise polka-dotted sheets. Toys were no longer littering the floor, and instead of a table and chairs, there was a desk with a pristine laptop sitting on top. The dresser had clothes messily hanging out and there were chargers hanging from the sockets. Sully hardly believed it was the same room.

He stepped in, picking up a picture frame from Boo’s bedside table. There was a young woman in the picture who looked like an older version of Boo. It seemed like a family picture, a mom and dad, little brother, and the girl who looked like Boo.

“Is that Boo?” Mike whispered, voicing Sully’s thoughts. There was another picture frame, with the Boo doppelganger and a boy seeming to be her age. Sully’s parental instincts flared and he had a sudden desire to find and scare away this man, but he pushed these urges down. 

He put away the pictures and turned around. Something he hadn’t noticed before was boxes, strewn all over the room. Some were labeled with ‘sell’, others ‘donate’, but most were stamped with ‘dorm’. Sully recognized that word. And he did not like it.

“She’s all grown up,” Mike murmured. Sully sniffled. He opened a ‘donate’ box. Inside were the vaguely familiar toys he’d seen when he’d brought Boo back to her room; a starred ball, a cowgirl doll, a clownfish plush, all sorts of activities that were going to other children to enjoy.

“Our little girl.” Mike elbowed Sully.

“Our? No, we didn’t do this. Her parents did. We didn’t do anything.”

“We brought her back. Imagine if she never returned. What if her parents just spent the rest of their lives, wondering what happened to their daughter? She’d be off, running around as the only human in our world. She’d be miserable. This is all thanks to us.”

“Oh, sure.” The sound of scuffling behind the door brought the monsters out of their memories. Sully grabbed Mike and ducked into the closet where they came from. Before leaving, they watched through the crack as the girl they once fled for their lives with entered, talking with someone on the phone.

“Yeah, I’m loading up the boxes going to our dorm, Mom’s going to donate some of the other stuff and sell the rest in a garage sale after we move in. No, of course, it makes perfect sense. Yeah, I’ll see you in a few days. Love you.” She beamed. “Bye.” She picked up a box going to her dorm and tossed her phone onto her bed, exiting where she’d just entered to take the box to her car. 

A piece of paper that was stuck to the bottom flew towards the closet. Sully cracked open the door to pick it up and get a closer look: it was a drawing of him and Mike, and Boo’s mom had written the date when she’d drawn it in the upper left corner. Just about a week after they brought her back. She also wrote ‘they are real! She insists’. Sully smiled sadly.

Mike’s hand extended from the closet to pick up a stack of papers sitting on a stool just outside. His eye glazed over the top paper and widened. He handed the papers to Sully, muttering in disbelief.

“She’s going to make picture books about us.” It was true, the paper was a storybook outline for ‘book 1’ where a little girl gets lost in her new house, and two nice monsters named Mike Wazowski and Kitty give her Cheerios and bring her back to her bedroom. The other pages had outlines for books where the girl finds the monsters again and the trio go on adventures in her imagination. Sully smiled fondly.

“Mom, wait! I’m still loading boxes!” Boo cried, bursting back into the room as Mike closed the closet doors completely. Sully carefully set down the papers and they quickly retreated back to their world.

She opened the closet, wondering what could’ve caused the doors to shut on their own. She looked all over until her eyes settled on the drawing and book outlines. She grinned and picked them up, hugging them to her chest.

“Creative writing school, here I come.”

**Author's Note:**

> don't ask what this is  
> even i don't know  
> my tumblr is jack-of-all-bread if you wanna know


End file.
